Yves Bonnefoy | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bonnefoy in 2004 | |
| Born | Yves Jean Bonnefoy 24 June 1923 Tours, France |
| Died | 1 July 2016(2016-07-01) (aged 93) Paris, France |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Parent(s) | Marius Elie-Bonnefoy Hélène Maury |
Yves Jean Bonnefoy (24 June 1923,Tours – 1 July 2016,Paris) was a Frenchpoet andart historian.[1] He also published a number of translations, most notably the plays ofWilliam Shakespeare which are considered among the best in French.[2][1] He was a professor at theCollège de France from 1981 to 1993 and is the author of several works on art,art history, and artists includingMiró andGiacometti, and a monograph on Paris-based Iranian artist Farhad Ostovani.[2]The Encyclopædia Britannica states that Bonnefoy was ″perhaps the most important French poet of the latter half of the 20th century.″[3]
Bonnefoy was born inTours,Indre-et-Loire, the son of Marius Elie Bonnefoy, a railroad worker, and Hélène Maury, a teacher.[4][5] He studiedmathematics andphilosophy at theUniversities of Poitiers and theSorbonne in Paris.[2] After theSecond World War he travelled in Europe and the United States and studied art history.[4] From 1945 to 1947 he was associated with theSurrealists in Paris (a short-lived influence that is at its strongest in his first published work,Traité du pianiste (1946)). But it was with the highly personalDu mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve [fr] (On the Motion and Immobility of Douve, 1953) that Bonnefoy found his voice and that his name first came to public notice.[6] Bonnefoy's style is remarkable for the deceptive simplicity of its vocabulary.[4][7]
Bonnefoy's work has been translated into English by, among others,Emily Grosholz,Galway Kinnell, John Naughton,Alan Baker, Hoyt Rogers, Antony Rudolf,Beverley Bie Brahic and Richard Stamelmann. In 1967 he joined withAndré du Bouchet,Gaëtan Picon, andLouis-René des Forêts to foundL'éphémère, a journal of art andliterature. Commenting on his work, Bonnefoy has said:
One should not call oneself a poet. It would be pretentious. It would mean that one has resolved the problems poetry presents. Poet is a word one can use when speaking of others, if one admires them sufficiently. If someone asks me what I do, I say I'm a critic, or a historian.[6][8]
He taught literature at a number of universities in Europe and in the USA:Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (1962–64); Centre Universitaire, Vincennes (1969–1970);Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Princeton University, New Jersey; University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut;Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut;University of Geneva;University of Nice (1973–1976);University of Provence, Aix (1979–1981); andGraduate Center of the City University of New York, where he was made an honorary member of the Academy of the Humanities and Sciences.[9] In 1981, following the death ofRoland Barthes, he was given the chair of comparative study of poetry at theCollège de France.[2]
Bonnefoy continued to work closely with painters throughout his career and wrote prefaces for artists’ books, including those by his friendMiklos Bokor.[10]
Bonnefoy died on 1 July 2016 at the age of 93 in Paris. PresidentFrançois Hollande stated of Bonnefoy on his death that he would be remembered for "elevating our language to its supreme degree of precision and beauty".[11]
Bonnefoy was honoured with a number of prizes throughout his creative life. Early on he was awarded thePrix des Critiques in 1971. Ten years later, in 1981,The French Academy gave him its grand prize, which was soon followed by theGoncourt Prize for Poetry in 1987.[2] Over the next 15 years, Bonnefoy was awarded both thePrix mondial Cino Del Duca and theBalzan Prize (for Art History and Art Criticism in Europe) in 1995, theGolden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings in 1999, and the Grand Prize of the FirstMasaoka Shiki International Haiku Awards in 2000. Toward the final years of his life, Bonnefoy was recognized with theFranz Kafka Prize in 2007 and, in 2011, he received the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award, presented by the trustees of theGriffin Poetry Prize.[4] In 2014, he was co-winner of theJanus Pannonius International Poetry Prize.[12] He won the 2015International Nonino Prize in Italy.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
